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• 7 



THE 

WASHINGTON SPURIOUS 

LETTERS. 



A PAPER READ BEFORE 

THE MOUNT VERNON SOCIETY 
OF DETROIT, 

BY 

Mrs. Thos. Clapp Pitkin, 

DECEMBER 2, 1802. 



Printed By The Society. 



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|S EVERYTHING relating to Washington 
is interesting to the members of this 
society, I venture to say a few words in 
regard to a subject brought accidentally 
to my notice ; if it is already familiar to the 
ladies present I must beg their indulgence. 
Just before the last Mt. Vernon meeting I was in 
the city library, and seeing in the catalogue a volume 
entitled: '' Epistles; Domestic, Confidential and Official 
of General Washington," I brought it away thinking I 
might find something new in it, as indeed I did. The 
latter part of the book, under the name of Appendix, 
was filled with correspondence between Washington and 
officers both of the British and Continental armies, in 
regard to exchange of prisoners, etc., addresses to him 
and replies, and the well-known letter of Duche ; but at 
the beginning were seven private family letters of Wash- 
ington which I had never seen, five to his cousin Lund 
(who, as you are all aware, had the care of the Mt. 
Vernon estate during the whole of his military and 
official life), one to his step-son, John Parke Custis, and 

3 



one to his wife. I sat down to read the first letter to his 
cousin Lund, dated New York, June 12, 1776. The 
letters were all written fronn New York in the summer of 
1776, when Washington, as commander-in-chief, had his 
headquarters there. 

The style of epistolary correspondence in the last 
century was not the curt, incisive, straight-to-the-point 
fashion of to-day, and I was not, therefore, surprised at 
the elaborateness of the manner in which the General 
claimed, as he well might, his cousin's sympathy in the 
many and overwhelming difficulties of his position ; but 
I ivas surprised at the following passage : " Tell me, 
Lund, for you have long been privy to my most secret 
thoughts — trusting to thy native candor I have never 
hesitated to lay my heart bare and open to thy inspec- 
tion — tell me, then, am I, do you think, more subject to 
fears than other men ? For I will not conceal it from 
you that, at this moment, I feel myself a very coward. 
Do not mistake me ; I thank my God I have never yet 
known Avhat it was to fear for any personal danger that 
might befall me. I am not afraid to die. Why should 
I ? I am afraid only to die with infamy and disgrace, 
and if I am afraid so to die, need I tell you that I am 
ten thousand times more afraid to live like Lucifer, a 
fallen angel. No, Lund, that were too much ; betide 
what may, I cannot and I will not survive either my 



misfortunes or my disgraces. Heaven knows how truly 
I love my country, and that I embarked on this arduous 
enterprise on the purest motives ; but we have overshot 
our mark ; we have grasped at things beyond our reach ; 
it is impossible we should succeed, and I cannot with 
truth say that I am sorry for it, because I am far from 
being sure that we deserve to succeed." This electrified 
me, and the thought instantly arose in my mind, 
"Washington never could have written it." I read the 
rest of the letter, which was in the same strain of 
despondency, dwelling on the enormous difficulties that 
beset him, on the want of skill in officers, want of 
discipline in men, want of ammunition, want of everything 
an arm}^ ought to have, and that any gleams of success 
they may have had only served to make the inferiority of 
the Continental troops the more conspicuous. Then the 
writer goes on to say that in the first Continental 
Congress he thought he saw a tendency to measures he 
never could approve ; and when a Continental army was 
voted for he clearly saw for the first time, I quote, 
" that our aims reached farther than we cared to avow ; 
it was carried with an unanimity that really astonished 
me, because I know many who voted for it, were as 
averse to the independency of America as I was;" then 
apparently anticipating his cousin's question : Why do 
you not resign? he says: ''My resolution to hold out as 



long as I can is dictated by feelings which I neither can 
describe to you, nor wholly justify on paper," etc., etc. 
A faint-hearted leader of a forlorn hope was this, I men- 
tally exclaimed, and I turned mechanically to the title 
page, as if a second reading might enlighten me, but 
there it was — '^ Epistles, domestic, confidential and official 
from Gen. Washington, about the commencement of the 
American contest, when he entered on the command of the 
army of the United States, with an interesting series of 
his letters, particularly to the British Admirals, Arbuthnot 
and Digby, to Gen. Sir Henry Clinton, Lord Cornwallis, 
Sir Guy Carleton, Marquis de la Fayette, Benjamin 
Harrison, Speaker of the House of Delegates in Virginia, 
to Admiral the Count de Grasse, etc.," — then, as every 
well-brought-up reader ought to do, but which I had not 
done, I read the preface, which congratulated the country 
on this publication, as everything relating to a man so 
eminently exalted must be interesting. " Where is the 
man whose every sentiment deserves so well to be 
remembered?" '* In whom was there ever seen such an 
assemblage of virtues?" and more in the same strain of 
extreme adulation. After this, however, I found a sort 
of second preface, a special introduction to the seven 
letters, stating that, when Washington evacuated New 
York and Fort Lee, among the prisoners that fell into 
the enemy's hands at the latter place was his own 

6 



servant, Billy, who was ill and could not be moved, and 
that in his possessson was found a portmanteau belonging 
to his master, in which were these letters, which the 
writer, whoever he was, apparently an officer, sent over 
to his friends in England as objects of great curiosity and 
interest to them. 

I knew that Washington's family letters were some- 
times intercepted, for Howe at one time sent back to 
him one addressed to Mrs. Washington, unopened, for 
which he received the General's thanks. I knew that 
Fort Lee had been evacuated in such haste that quantities 
of army stores had been abandoned. I knew that a 
favorite servant called William, was with Washington in 
the army, but I never heard he had been taken prisoner, 
however, a great many things happened in the Revolu- 
tionary War I never heard of, and I, no doubt, had 
forgotten many things I had heard of — so I turned again 
to the letters. They were all in the same strain, those 
written after July 4th strongly deprecating the hasty 
action of Congress in declaring independence, and 
extreme doubt expressed in regard to the issue of the 
conflict. In the one to his step-son Custis were these 
words : " I do not really wish for independence. I hope 
there are few who do." While to his wife he declared : 
" So far as I have control of them, all our preparations 
for war aim only at peace. The only true interest of 

7 



both sides is reconciliation " (not recognition, 3^011 perceive) 
"nor can there be a point in the world clearer than that 
both sides must be losers by war, in a manner that even 
peace will not compensate for. We miist at last agree 
and be friends, for we cannot live without them, and they 
ivill not without us, and a bystander might well be 
puzzled to find out why as good terms may not be given 
and taken now as when we shall have well-nigh ruined 
each other by the mutual madness of cutting one 
another's throats." In the same letter the Commander- 
in-Chief of the American Army wrote: " I love my king, 
you know I do ; a soldier, a good man cannot but love 
him." Intermixed with these expressions, of which I 
have only given a few samples, were many more in 
harmony with my idea of Washington, while the references 
to Virginia politics, to the domestic affairs of the Mt. 
Vernon estate, the directions about seeds and crops, 
about remittances to his agents in London, to whom lie 
sent his tobacco, about the negroes, many of them 
mentioned by name, the advice to his step-son, and 
messages to friends and neighbors, and through all, his 
great anxiety that Mrs. Washington should not come to 
headquarters till she had been inoculated, (a very neces- 
sary precaution in those days before vaccination had 
robbed small pox of its terrors), all these things puzzled 
me so much, I laid the book down and, going into the 



library, began a search for some light on the matter. 
I there found, in Jared Spark's '' Writings of Wash- 
ington," the information I needed. 

I had stumbled upon a very rare and very famous, or 
rather infamous, publication, first issued in London and 
afterwards in this country by the Rivingtons and 
scattered broadcast over the land to put Washington 
before his countrymen in the light of a hypocrite ; 
secretly opposed to the war and absolutely doubtful of 
its success; holding privately opinions totally at variance 
with his public position and duty as Commander-in-chief, 
and yet were these opinions so artfully intermingled with 
statements of actual facts connected with the distracted 
state of the country, and written with the air of one so 
entirely at home in the Washington household, it is not 
surprising that those not perfectly familiar with his 
absolute sincerity must have been greatly influenced ; 
while in England the letters could not but strengthen the 
warlike policy of King George and his cabinet. 

As we look back upon our Revolutionary struggle we 
are apt to imagine that one flame of patriotism, impelling 
to noble sacrifices and noble deeds, lighted up our whole 
country; but was it so? Why, then, did John Adams (a 
member of the Continental Congress) write to his wife 
in July, 1776: "Our army at Crown Point is an object 
of wretchedness enough to fill a humane mind with 



horror; disgraced, defeated; discontented; dispirited; 
diseased; naked; undisciplined; eaten up with vermin; 
no clothes; beds; blankets; no medicines; no victuals 
but salt pork and flour." Were things in better condition 
two years later? Washington, with his little army at 
Valley Forge (as the very interesting paper read by Mrs. 
Parker at our last meeting showed us), was obliged to see 
his troops suffering from every possible evil; hunger and 
cold ; without shoes or blankets ; his military chest 
empty ; in vain imploring relief from Congress ; great 
discord in Congress itself, owing to State jealousies ; an 
army without training or subordination ; officers quarrel- 
ing and resigning (no less than ninety in a very short 
time) ; and some of the verv highest rank conspiring for 
his own deposition ; all these things made the outlook 
gloomy indeed, and yet were they met with a patience 
and magnanimity ; with an unfailing trust in the justice 
and final triumph of the cause that seem to us now 
almost superhuman. 

It was at this darkest hour of the war, the winter of 
1778, that these spurious letters were sent on their evil 
errand. Richard Henry Lee, in Virginia, wrote to the 
Commander-in-chief asking if he had seen some letters 
published in New York, purporting to have been written 
by him and intercepted ; to which Washington replied 
that he had seen one spurious letter from himself to Mrs. 



Washington, scattered as a hand-bill, and he supposed 
the letters referred to were of the same character, and 
asking to see them. At the first safe opportunity Lee 
sent them, and this is the notice Washington sends in 
return : 

Valley Forge, May 25, 1778. 
To Gen. Henry Lee, Virginia, 

If anything of greater moment had occurred than declaring that 
every word contained in the pamphlet you were obliging enough to 
send me was spurious, I would not have suffered your favor of the 
6th inst. to remain so long unacknowledged. 

These letters are written with a great deal of art, the mixture of 
so many family circumstances (which, by the way, want foundation in 
truth)*" gives an air of plausibility which renders the villainy greater ; 
as the whole is a contrivance to answer the most diabolical purposes. 
Who the author of them is I know not From information or 
acquaintance he must have had some knowledge of the component 
parts of my family ; but he has. most egregiously, mistaken facts in 
several instances. The design of his labor is as clear as the sun in 
his meridian brightness. 

And this was all. No public disclaimer, to meet a 
public libel, that he, as Commander-in-chief, might 
certainly have put forth to the army and country in 
which he played such an important part, but he brushes 
the whole matter aside, as if unworthy of a moment's 
thought, and secure in the knowledge of his own honesty, 
goes unruffled on his way of difficulty and danger. 



*The letter to Mrs. Washington, for instance, is dated at a time she was with 
the General in New York. 



There is something noble, infinitely grand and noble, 
in this silence of Washington, and the absolute confidence 
with which he leaves his character to justify itself to the 
world, and had it not been for later events, this vile 
attempt to ruin him, like many others that beset his 
career, might have sunk into the oblivion it merited. 

When, in the year 1789, the unanimous vote of the 
electors of these United States called Washington from 
his well-earned repose to the office of their first President, 
long experience of men, their selfishness, their passions, 
and their baseness must have told him he was going to 
no '' bed of roses." In his diary at this time he writes : 
" I bade adieu to Mt. Vernon, to private life and to 
domestic felicity, and with a mind oppressed with more 
anxious care and painful sensations than I have words to 
express set out for New York, with the best disposition 
to my country in obedience to its call, but with less hope 
of answering its expectations." 

There was reason for his depression. The constitution, 
which, till now, had been only a theory, — on paper, — 
was to be put in operation, and none knew better than 
he that, when theories come to be tried in practice, 
imperfections, unseen before, will surely be found in 
them, and also, that, while in all governments an oppo- 
sition must be expected, it is likely, in republican states, 
to be strong and virulent. On this point John Adams, 



now Vice-President, wrote to his wife : " It is still but an 
experiment whether the Ministers of State, under an 
elective executive, will not be overborne by an elective 
legislature. I believe it to be certain that two elective 
houses of legislation, or even one, have it in their power, 
whenever they shall have it in their will, to render any 
Minister of State, or even any elective executive 
unpopular, though he may be possessed of the most 
perfect integrity." 

The prophecy of this wise and far-seeing statesman 
met with such a speedy fulfillment, it must even have 
surprised himself. 

There was always a strong opposition to Washington's 
administration, which reached a crisis during his second 
term of office. At that time our government was very 
anxious to have affairs with Great Britain put upon a 
more satisfactory footing than we had yet been able to 
effect. Although peace, or rather an armistice, had been 
made in 1783, Great Britain had never acknowledged 
us as an independent nation before the world. She still 
held the border forts, while the whole vastly important 
matters of commercial relations, — the fisheries, unpaid 
debts owing from our citizens, claims for spoliations during 
the war, — all these needed to be settled on a permanent 
basis. 



13 



John Jay was sent to England to conduct this very 
dehcate negotiation, and finally arranged a treaty, which 
was not all Washington wished for, nor all he hoped for, 
but the best that could be obtained, and when it arrived 
in March, 1795, just after the adjournment of Congress, 
an extra session of the Senate was called in June to 
ratify it. 

So violent was party-spirit at this time, George Gibbs, 
the historian, writes: "The very intelligence of the 
reception of the treaty, even before its contents were 
divulged, produced a furious outbreak against the admin- 
istration." And when these were made public a storm 
of popular fury swept over the country, which at first 
the advocates of the measure seemed helpless to oppose. 
The press teemed with attacks upon the President and 
his policy, "so bitterly personal and so vituperative in 
language as to excite indignation when read now." City 
after city held public meetings, where the passions, not 
the understandings of men, were addressed, the most 
inflammatory speeches made and remonstrances addressed 
to the President asking him not to sign the treaty. The 
replies of the chief magistrate to these addresses are 
models of dignity and firmness. He threw himself back 
on his constitutional rights and declared himself 
determined to act only as his own conscience would 
approve for the best interests of the country without 

14 



regard to any party. With the advice and consent of 
the Senate the treaty was signed by him in August, and 
ratified in London in October; but so mah'gnant had 
been the opposition to it that when the House of 
Representatives came together in the winter, and it was 
necessary they should make appropriations to carry it 
into effect, they factiously refused, calhng instead for all 
the papers on the subject, and this attitude they main- 
tained till nearly the end of the session, when wiser 
counsels prevailed, and the nation coming to its senses 
recalled them to their duty. It was a year of great 
excitement and great peril. Oliver Wolcott, then Secre- 
tary of the Treasury, writing to Alexander Hamilton, 
says: ''I think the government will succeed in the 
present contest ; but it remains doubtful whether order 
can long be preserved. Unless a radical change of 
opinion can be effected in the Southern States, the 
existing establishments will not last eighteen months." 
The Vice-President, w^riting to his wife, says: ''A pros- 
pect of foreign war and civil war in conjunction is not 
very pleasant. We are a poor divided nation in the 
midst of all our prosperity. If the House refuse to 
make the appropriation it is difficult to see how we can 
avoid war, and it is not easier to find out how we can 
preserve this government from dissolution." In another 
letter, he writes to Mrs. Adams : *' There is a good deal 

15 



of apprehension felt for the Union." In another: "It 
is a mortifying consideration that five naonths have been 
wasted upon a question whether national faith is binding 
on a nation." Jonathan Trumbull speaks of the situation 
in Congress, of which he was a member, being " so critical 
and alarming;" and Chauncey Goodrich, also a member, 
calls it an "awful crisis." The Hon. Timothy Pitkin, in 
his Political and Civil History, says the treaty created 
such divisions as to put in jeopardy the government 
itself. 

During this long agitation the President wrote to 
Edward Carrington, of ^Virginia : 

No candid man, in the least degree acquainted with the progress 
of this business, will believe for a moment, that the ostensible dispute 
was about papers, or whether the British treaty was a good one or a 
bad one, but whether there should be a treaty at all, without the 
concurrence of the House of Representatives. This was striking at 
once, and that, boldly too, at the fundamental principles of the Con- 
stitution, and if it were established, would render the treaty-making 
power not only a nullity, but such an absolute absurdity as to reflect 
disgrace upon the framers of it. For, will anyone suppose that they 
who framed, or those who adopted that instrument, ever intended to 
give the power to the President and Senate to make treaties, and 
declaring that when ratified they should be the law of the land, would 
in the same breath place it in the power of the House of Representa- 
tives to fix their vote on them, unless apparent marks of fraud and 
corruption accompanied the measure, or such striking evidence of 
national injury as to make a war, or any other evil preferable. 

i6 



Regardless of truth, Washington's enemies assailed 
him with a license and malignity which showed an utter 
despair of effecting their ends by honorable means. In a 
private letter to the Secretary of State, the President, 
alluding to the violent opposition to the treaty, writes : 
" I am accordingly preparing my mind for the obloquy 
which disappointment and malice are preparing to heap 
upon my head." Perhaps, therefore, he was not surprised 
at the re-appearance of the forged letters of nearly twenty 
years before. 

These letters, you remember, had never been publicly 
disavowed, and they were a powerful weapon, ready for 
the hands of his enemies to represent him as having 
always been disloyal to his country, and a secret favorer 
of British, not American interests. They were re-pub- 
lished in Boston and New York in pamphlet form, and 
extracts from them spread abroad through the newspapers 
to every part of the country, where they increased, if 
possible, the fury of the opposition. Let me say here, 
before leaving the subject, that the Treaty — the occasion 
of such bitter party feeling — disappointed its enemies, 
and more than justified the expectations of its friends ; 
saved the country from an impending war, and laid the 
foundation for its durable prosperity. To return to the 
letters; Washington took no more notice of them now 
than when eighteen years before they had been used 

17 



against him, though his correspondence shows he felt the 
injury keenly. It seems to me that at such a very 
critical time any Executive would have been justified in 
putting forth a disclaimer, but he judged differently, and 
afterwards gave his reasons for his silence in a letter to 
the Rev. William Gordon : 

I suffered every attack that was made upon my executive 
conduct to pass unnoticed while I remained in office, well knowing 
that if the general tenor of it would not stand the test of investigation 
a newswaper vindication would be of little avail, but, as immense 
pains have been taken to disseminate these counterfeit letters, I 
conceived it a justice due to my own character and to posterity, to 
disown them in explicit terms, and this I did in a letter to the 
Secretary of State, to be filed in his office on the day on which I closed 
my administration. 

This is his letter : 

Philadelphia, March 3d, 1797. 
To Tivwthy Pickering, Secrctai-y of State : 

Dear Sir — At the conclusion of my public employments I have 
thought it expedient to notice the publication of certain forged letters 
which first appeared in the year 1777, and were obtruded upon the 
public as mine. They are said, by the editor, to have been found in 
a small portmanteau that I had left in the care of my mulatto servant, 
named Billy, who, it is pretended, was taken prisoner at Fort Lee in 
1776. The period when these letters were first printed will be 
recollected, and what were the impressions they were intended to 
produce on the public mind. It was then supposed to be of some 
consequence to strike at the integrity of the motives of the American 
Commander-in-chief, and to point his inclinations as at variance with 

18 



I 



his professions and his duty. Another crisis in the affairs of America 
having occurred, the same weapon has been resorted to to wound my 
character and to deceive the people. The letters in question have the 
dates, addresses and signatures here following : 

"New York, June 12, 1776. To Mr. Lund Washington, at Mt. 
Vernon, Fairfax Co., Virginia, G. W. 

"To John Parke Custis, Esq., at the Hon. Benedict Calvert's, 
Esq., Mount Airy, Maryland, June 18, 1776. Geo. Washington. 

"New York, July 8, 1776. To Mr. Lund Washington, at Mt. 
Vernon, Fairfax Co., Virginia. G. W. 

" New York, July 15° 1776. To Mr. Lund Washington. G. W. 

"New York, July 22, 1776. To Mr. Lund Washington. G. W. 

"June 24, 1776. To Mrs. Washington. G. W." 

At the time when these letters first appeared it was notorious to 
the army immediately under my command, and particularly to the 
gentlemen attached to my person, that my mulatto man Billy had 
never been one moment in the power of the enemy. It is also a fact 
that no part of my baggage, nor any of my attendants were captured 
during the whole course of the war. These well-known facts made it 
unnecessary during the war to call the public attention to the forgery 
by any express declaration of mine ; and a firm reliance on my 
fellow-citizens, and the abundant proofs which they gave of their 
confidence in me, rendered it alike unnecessary to take any formal 
notice of the revival of the imposition during my civil administration. 
But as I cannot know how soon a more serious event may succeed to 
that, which will this day take place, I have thought it a duty which I 
owed to myself, to my country, and to truth, now to detail the 
circumstances above recited, and to add my solemn declaration that 
the letters herein described are a base forgery, and that I never saw 
or heard of them until they appeared in print. The present letter I 
commit to your care, and desire that it may be deposited in the office 



of the department of State, as a testimony of the truth to the present 
generation and to posterity. Accept, I pray you, the sincere esteem 
and affectionate regard of dear sir, etc. 

George Washington. 

The Secretary of State, beside filing this letter in his 
office, caused copies to be widely circulated in the 
newspapers of the day, but the publishers of the forged 
letters took no notice, — made no apology. The copy in 
our library was an issue of 1796, — both in London and 
New York, — bound with a quantity of official documents, 
and preceded, as I said before, by a flattering preface to 
give it an air of credibility. I found the volume had 
only been a short time in the library, and on ' my 
representation of its true character to the superintendent, 
he immediately looked into the matter and caused a 
fly leaf to be inserted, stating the truth to the reader. 

After Washington's retirement from public life he 
deputed a friend, who had been one of his aides, to go to 
the Rivingtons and, if possible, procure the name of the 
author of these letters, pledging his honor that nothing 
to his disadvantage, or to the disadvantage of any of the 
actors of that time should result from it, but the attempt 
was unsuccessful. Washington's suspicions had fallen on 
one who had been very intimate in his household, — John 
Randolph, the last Attorney-General of Virginia under 



the crown, who fled from his native state soon after the 
war began, and died in England. 

While making these investigations I was not aware 
that Mr. Chauncey Worthington Ford, a gentleman who 
has devoted a great deal of time to the discovery and 
publication of very interesting facts connected with the 
ancestry, family and life of Washington, had published 
in 1889 ^ brochure on this very subject, in which, after 
the lapse of more than a century, these forged letters are, 
for the first time, printed under their proper title, 
" Spurious." If I had known this earlier, it would have 
saved me much trouble, and you the trial of your 
patience in listening to this paper. 



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